


The Best Help in the Universe

by nonelvis



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 23:29:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonelvis/pseuds/nonelvis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just who <em>was</em> that woman in the shop, anyway?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Help in the Universe

**Author's Note:**

> Because someone had to write this before the BBC almost certainly josses it. Contains short references to dialogue from "The Invasion" and "The Bells of St. John."

Clara sometimes wondered whether she was due combat pay for taking the kids to the electronics shop. At least it wasn't a weekly excursion – usually only when Artie needed a new 3DS game, or when Angie had lost her mobile (again) – but ripping the pair of them away from the latest bit of glimmering black plastic was always nearly impossible. Like iron filings to magnets, they arrowed straight to whatever gadget was newest, costliest, and (inevitably) forbidden, unwilling to let go.

"I want a new PlayStation," Angie whined as they neared a display booth featuring game snippets looped at near-epileptic speed on a television wider than Clara's bed. "Dad won't mind, honest."

"Is this some new definition of 'honest'?" Clara said. "Like one that really means 'Dad will chuck the biggest fit ever'?"

"Come on, Clara."

"What makes you think I've got that kind of money lying around, anyway? Look, you and Artie can play with it while I go look for that whatever-it-is cord we need to connect –"

"It's an HDMI cable. God, don't you know anything?" Angie rolled her eyes – one of her most finely honed talents.

"– and nothing too violent, you hear? I don't want to come back and find zombie parts all over the screen."

"I can't believe you don't trust us."

Clara pointed at Angie and Artie in turn. "No. Violence. Find a nice racing game. Or something with little cartoon dinosaurs or some such."

"Fine." Ah, Angie's put-upon sigh. Another classic.

Cabling was near the back of the store, adjacent to a roomful of dusty odds and ends: laptops gone obsolete moments after they'd hit the shelves; printers with impossible-to-find ink cartridges; boxes with dispiritingly large holes and dents, emblazoned with company names Clara had never seen before and suspected existed only in some pirate's imagination.

She was alone in the cabling aisle other than a slender woman with a narrow face and silvery bob-cut. The woman wore a checked pea coat, sleek black trousers, and a dove-grey blouse, all far too posh for an ordinary electronics shop; yet there she was, rifling through multicoloured cable packages in search of the right model, just like anyone else. Clara sniffed: vanilla and spice, something pungent she couldn't yet place.

The woman turned to Clara and smiled sympathetically. "I'm so sorry, I couldn't help noticing you and those two adorable children," she said. "Always the experts, aren't they?"

"Oh, yeah, they're the experts, all right." Clara peered at the wall of clamshell boxes, each marked with incomprehensible sets of letters and numbers, combinations she'd never been able to unlock. "Especially at Angie's age. Knows everything in the whole wide world, can't tell her a thing."

"I like to think we all grow out of it eventually. Some of us a little less than others, perhaps."

"The thing is," Clara said, "she really does know this stuff backwards and forwards. I'm utterly hopeless at computers."

"So many of us are." The woman leaned in, hints of clove now – no, not clove, more floral – wafting close from her perfume. "I've always thought of them as bullies myself, and I refuse to be bullied."

"Good for you. They really are terrible bullies, aren't they? 'Download this,' 'upgrade that.' 'Error number I don't even know what it is and I'm not going to tell you, I'm just going to shut down in the middle of that recipe you're cooking from.' Give me a nice, polite book any day instead."

The woman laughed. "That's the spirit, my dear girl. But next time one of those nasty machines is bullying you, I want you to call this number." She reached into her pocket, removed a black, leather-bound notebook and a fountain pen that couldn't possibly have fit in such slim trousers, and wrote a number in elegant, curved handwriting with circular flourishes. "Best help line in the universe, I always say."

"Really?" Clara took the paper, folded it in half, and slipped it into her purse. "Thank you. I'll definitely call them next time."

"They're especially good with wifi," the woman said. "Ah, here we are." She plucked a neon orange circle of cabling from a low hook, nodded to herself, turned round, and raised an eyebrow. "... but I'm not so certain how they deal with fearless young zombie-hunters."

"Oh, they are _not._ " Clara spun about. Half a store away, the screen at the PlayStation stand was spattered in high-definition zombie shreds, and Artie was cheering loudly. "Right," she said, "lovely to meet you and all, but I've got to go confiscate every screen those two adorable children own for the next twenty-four hours."

"Best of luck, then. I expect you'll need it." The woman waved cheerfully, then disappeared with her cable among the towers of odds and ends.

The aisle leading back to the PlayStations was thick with customers, but through the din of their voices, and Coldplay droning over the store speakers, Clara could still hear what sounded like one of the old printers slouching towards death, wheezing and jamming over and over until it sputtered and faded away. 

And days later, when her laptop's wifi stuttered to a halt, and she remembered the hotline to the best help in the universe, she retrieved the folded paper from her purse. Traces of that mysterious floral scent still lingered: allspice, it might have been; rounded, warm, enticing. Clara was sorry now she hadn't asked the woman what she was wearing, but perhaps, if she was very lucky, they'd meet again someday.

She picked up the phone, and pressed the numbers, and waited.


End file.
